1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for driving a plasma display panel and a plasma display device.
2. Discussion of the Background
A plasma display panel (PDP) is a flat panel display that uses plasma generated by gas discharge to display characters or images. It may include, depending on its size, millions of pixels arranged in a matrix pattern.
Generally, the PDP is driven by dividing one frame into a plurality of subfields having respective weights. Grayscales of a discharge cell in a PDP may be expressed by a combination of the respective weights of light-emitting subfields of the discharge cell. Each subfield may include a reset period, an address period, and a sustain period. The reset period is for initializing the status of each discharge cell. The address period is for performing an addressing operation to select turn-on/turn-off cells. The sustain period is for sustain discharging turned on cells to satisfy a weight value of the corresponding subfield, thereby displaying a picture.
In the address period, a scan pulse is sequentially applied to scan electrodes so that the addressing operation may be sequentially performed. As such, after completing the addressing operation for all cells, the sustain discharging operations are performed in the sustain period.
With such a driving method, the sustain discharging operation is not performed for the firstly addressed scan electrode until the addressing operation is performed for all scan electrodes. Consequently, in a previously addressed discharge cell, sustain discharging may occur after a relatively long time as compared to in another discharge cell.
In a discharge cell having a long idle time, priming particles and/or a wall voltage formed in the discharge cell by the addressing operation may be reduced. Hence, the sustain discharging operation may become unstable.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention, and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person or ordinary skill in the art.